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Encouraging city-dwellers to abandon their cars is tough. They want journeys that are quick and painless - adjectives that few drivers associate with public transport. Yet recent trials in Europe, of a unique navigation system, suggest two to three per cent of people would definitely hop on a local bus or train more often. On condition they receive enough accurate and timely information about available services.
Getting around cities, especially unfamiliar ones can be problematic. Even in places blessed with good public transport, people struggle to work out the ideal route from A to B. Juggling with paper maps and timetables for buses, trains and trams is nobody's idea of fun. Small wonder that people given a choice prefer their trusty car or a taxi.
A consortium of six partners decided to organise smarter urban trips. Together they formed PEPTRAN, a two-year project under the European Union's Information Society Technologies (IST) programme. Their goal was to develop and test a new navigation solution, calculating within seconds the best-possible route between two points in a city.
That route may include a combination of walking and public transport services. In cases where it also allows use of a car, drivers are first guided to a Park and Ride spot. They leave their vehicle at this car park before continuing their trip by public transport.
The project's client-server software system runs on two platforms: a handheld device (the Nokia 9210 phone) and an existing car-navigation system that has been customised. Both are wirelessly linked by GSM transmissions to pedestrian, car and public transport navigation servers. The three servers feed the devices with the requested route-planning data. Anyone with a PC or PDA Web browser could then access the service through the project website.
Finding your way
The process begins when a user punches in the journey's date/time and its start/end coordinates (if known) or street names to search for. Detailed street maps and instructions are then displayed on the various devices, taking users through their trip step-by-step.
The complete route assembled on the devices takes into account the user's location, public transport timetables and, where possible, live information about the progress of public transport vehicles. Alternative but possibly more time-consuming routes are also suggested, for example involving fewer changes of vehicle or shorter walking distances.
"Our goal was to bring up a route on-screen in 30 seconds, but on average we bettered that by eight seconds," says Karl Lloyd, from British Maritime Technology, which coordinated the project. Under optimal conditions, he believes, the system could work out routes in just three to five seconds.
Trials of the system took place in the Italian city of Turin and in Winchester, in the UK. Volunteers were given the handheld or the specially kitted-out Fiat car and told to experiment by making trips around their city. Most users were aged under 34, corresponding to the project's target audience: those to be encouraged to make greater use of public transport.
Conclusions came from analysis of volunteers' post-trial questionnaires as well as of the log files recorded in the handheld devices' memory. Results varied slightly between the Italian and the UK trials. This was partly due to the fact that Turin's transport authority provided live data on the position of vehicles, whereas Winchester could only predict when buses would arrive at stops.
Considerable timesavings
In Turin, where there are numerous public transport interconnections, the system consistently revealed the existence of convenient routes between two points. Those who made use of the system here decreased their journey times by between five and ten per cent, compared to those who tried to work out their own routes in the traditional way.
"Our experience was similar to that of Italians, with one noticeable difference," says Jamie Lightfoot, from the Intelligent Transport Systems Group at Hampshire County Council, responsible for overseeing the UK trial. "Volunteers tended to walk less distance in Turin, where there is a denser public transport network and more alternative options available."
Over one in ten (two per cent said "definitely" and nine per cent said "probably") of the UK testers said they would be encouraged to use local public transport more often if they had this service on their own mobile phones. A figure, coincidentally, in line with the public transport targets of Hampshire County Council over the next few years. More than half of users also said they would willingly pay a fixed amount monthly for such a service.
Anna, a UK volunteers, said she experimented with the system for a week and found a faster route to her workplace by travelling on foot and by bus. "It was particularly useful on a longer trip, telling me how and where to change buses, as well as estimating a total journey time." She admitted to being "very impressed" with the system, but "wished the details could be completely accurate all the time." The in-car system tested by her fellow volunteers, which calls on a standard car-navigation system sharing routes and maps wirelessly with the handheld, also received general approval.
Overall, almost half of the people using the Peptran system found it a viable timesaving aid. However, around 43 per cent found it increased journey times - probably due to inefficient transport network interconnections rather than problems with the system itself.
The project concluded that the system would likely be more useful for those not familiar with travel routes in a city, such as tourists and professional drivers. Car-sharing and rental services might benefit too.
Peptran clearly underlined that information provision is only part of the public transport solution. Getting more Europeans onto local buses and trains will also require new and cleaner fleets as well as improved services and routes.
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